2 Atlantic City casinos open a day early

Shopping Revel provides 55, square feet of shopping space at the "Row. The Ocean Room has floor-to-ceiling windows and an ocean view. Home Edition' on cable, where the things they get done in the last few hours are amazing. The View Suite has sweeping Atlantic views through floor-to ceiling windows. Even gamblers can see the ocean and horizon from the gaming floor. Pennsylvania's 10 casinos - soon to be 11 with the opening Saturday of the Valley Forge Casino Resort - have cut into what had been a steady clientele for Atlantic City for three decades.

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Home Edition' on cable, where the things they get done in the last few hours are amazing. Jim Allen, chairman of Hard Rock International, was walking the casino floor, checking on how things were going. Here and there, ladders were hidden behind plastic sheeting where work was still not quite finished. Work was continuing into the night on a hotel tower, but Allen said that on the whole, "We're pretty happy with where we are right now. They were two of the five Atlantic City casinos that had shut down since Together, they will restore about 6, of the 11, jobs that were lost in the shutdowns.

One striking thing on the casino's very first night: Those who remember the heavy-handed decorating taste of Donald and Ivana Trump from the Taj Mahal days won't recognize the place: The row after row of chandeliers dominating the view as patrons would ride the main escalator down to the casino floor are gone, supplanted by a giant silver illuminated guitar suspended from the ceiling. Video screens surrounding the escalators play clips of Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Nirvana and Johnny Cash as customers descend to the casino floor.

Instead, Revel borrows heavily from the Las Vegas playbook, housing such amenities as theaters, nightclubs, cabanas, retail shops, and restaurants with celebrity chefs Jose Garces, Michel Richard, and Marc Forgione. The ,square-foot gaming floor represents just 5 percent of the complex - comparable to the Venetian and Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, but smaller by more than 30, square feet than a few other Atlantic City casinos - and smaller even than Revel's available meeting space.

Unlike other Boardwalk casinos, which put the ocean to their backs which critics say was to discourage patrons from leaving , Revel embraced the water and light. Even gamblers can see the ocean and horizon from the gaming floor. Every room and suite has an ocean or bay view. And, two, it's much more sustainable. Pennsylvania's 10 casinos - soon to be 11 with the opening Saturday of the Valley Forge Casino Resort - have cut into what had been a steady clientele for Atlantic City for three decades.

Jackie Hemphill, of Lambertville, N. It takes her 35 minutes to get to Parx in Bensalem vs. Analyst Kempf said Revel's biggest obstacles were "new competition within and outside of Atlantic City, having a small room base, and executing on its nongaming strategy. It edges out Bally's with 1, rooms.

I'm not saying they won't, but it will be challenging. The smaller venues that are already on the bubble, such as Resorts and the Atlantic Club formerly the Atlantic City Hilton , could face extinction, he said. But Mustapha Moutaouakil, 43, a professional poker player from Mystic, Conn. If they have good poker games, I might go there," he said, as he played in a recent tournament at the Borgata. At times, Revel's reaching completion seemed like a long shot.

It began construction in late , but a plane crash in the summer of killed six executives who were on their way to select glass for the facade. The recession hit later that year, and lending froze.

Five and a half years after it broke ground, Revel Entertainment Group L. Revel arrives as Pennsylvania and New Jersey duke it out for the second-largest U.